


The Night Before

by ShadeShine



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: For the Forgotten, Slow Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27631159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeShine/pseuds/ShadeShine
Summary: Edelgard suffers through the last night before the final battle.Whether she wins or loses, she will never see Dimitri or Byleth again.If she loses, her ambitions come to nothing.If she wins, the endless toil never ends.
Kudos: 2





	The Night Before

The Fortress at Enbarr was, if nothing else, a place where anyone can hide. With the Imperial Physicians on duty, even death could be warded away in many situations.

Tonight, the Emperor found no solace in that fact as she took off her armor.

Her sealed chambers were lonely. Loneliness, perhaps, was the easiest thing to deal with. It neither required her to kill nor to stare at those who hated her.

And yet, it was also the hardest.

For the woman in the mirror seemed to have every counterargument. The woman in the mirror hated her. She asked with her silent gaze, “why didn't you stop before it came to this?”

That question got asked a thousand times.

Plotting against her countrymen, traitors and fools as they were.

Plotting against Fodlan, as corrupt as it was.

Hiring that bandit and risking the lives of her classmates.

The kidnapping of Flayn. 

The tragedy at Remire.

Everything she had done that those snakes benefited from.

Everything she had done for her own ambitions, too, earned her that figure's disapproval.

Nonetheless, the night air was warm. 

Without her armor, she no longer had to suffer and sweat. She could just be.

No one needed her to be the iron fist and the headsman's ax all in one woman.

She was just a woman who could finally take that stupid ornamental crown off of her head and let her hair down again.

She fluffed her hair and looked to the mirror.

The woman in the mirror looked tired.

She knew her palace would fall soon. She knew it was all over. She knew that, tomorrow, she would meet with Dimitri.

Maybe he'd have her assassinated.

The woman in the mirror smiled. It'd be over. She wouldn't be driven ever onward toward her goal. Part of her rebelled against giving in. Part of her begged for it to happen.

An explosion of noise from behind her and a stabbing pain in her back threw her out of her thoughts.

Footsteps.

Her legs buckled underneath her and she fell to her knees.

She could see a pair of dark figures enter the room through the mirror.

The scraping of furniture drew her eyes toward the chamber door. They were sealing her in.

Would anyone even know until tomorrow morning?

The masked figures grabbed her and turned her around.

“I should have known that Dimitri was just buying time.”

“No, Edelgard,” said the left figure, “if Dimitri knew, he'd have stopped us.”

“Byleth,” she said. Her breath was already getting a bit ragged. What got hit? Her stomach? Her lungs? She could breathe still, but it hurt. That meant it couldn't be the lungs, right?

She cursed herself for not paying more attention to Manuela's lectures. But she had been so tired, even then...

“This is for Jeralt,” said the other figure. Her bold voice couldn't be forgotten.

Leonie. 

“All this for one person?” Edelgard felt herself laughing...and then coughing. It was going to end soon because of a man who, in the grand scheme of things, didn't matter at all. She had written the incident off years ago.

“My father.”

“The man who showed me I could be anything.”

It made sense.

Both were mercenaries or, at least, Leonie would have been a mercenary if the war hadn't gotten in the way.

Loyalty, in a perverse way, was the only sort of honor their kind could have.

“I'll make it quick,” said Byleth, drawing the Sword of the Creator.

Edelgard closed her eyes, thankful that the end was coming.

“That's more than you deserve,” said Leonie.

And it was.

But, at last, she was free.

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought it was somewhat strange that Jeralt's murder isn't held more against Edelgard by Byleth, at least.
> 
> I get it, he's just one guy. In a war, that's just a miniscule fraction of a statistic.
> 
> I know that Edelgard didn't do it, but she stood silent and let it happen. She offers no warning. In the Black Eagles route, she even tells Byleth that they need to move on. Ice cold!
> 
> But he's Byleth's frickin' dad.
> 
> Maybe I just expect too much of these generic 'my units', but how can anyone forgive the person who conspired with the people who killed their father?
> 
> And Leonie would never forget.
> 
> How could she?


End file.
